Kathleen Vandiar
Name: Kathleen Vandiar Age: 90 Nationality: I don't know Appearance: Hair: Long Brown Eyes: Light blue Skin: Caucasian Height: Average Voice: Normal? She looked up the White Tower, almost in disbelief. She looked away and looked back again just to make sure it was really there. She had grown up in a small town so far from the Tar Valon that the city itself was almost a fairy tale in her head. She had grown up in a small family, she was the only girl. Her father was a blacksmith and spent most of his days away from home. Her two older brothers went to learn from her father when they were old enough and she stayed home with her mother. From the time she was a small child her mother would tell her stories of such splendour she couldn't help but think they were tales. Wonderful tales of Tinkers and glee men and travelling shows before bed would always give her such vibrant dreams. And when she was being naughty or getting into things she shouldn't her mother would tell her tales of trollocks and darkfriends. Her favourite stories were always of the majestic Aes Sedai who where so graceful and upstanding. It had taken her years to realize that her mother never spoke of them in the presence of her brothers or father. The only reason she did notice it was because on afternoon two years before, her mother had accidentally slipped the word "warder" into a sentence and for the first time in her life Kathleen saw her father fly into a out rage that didn't end until well into the evening. She had ran out of the room at the sound of his raised voice and she never did find out what he had been so upset about. When she looked up at the tower in front of her Kathleen fought back a tear as she thought about her journey and how it started two years before. Her mother had fallen sick two and a half years ago and though she was looked at by the best in the town, no one knew what caused the sickness. It started with complaints of head aches and she was tired more often, but as the weeks past she grew more and more weary and couldn't keep food down, she took to bed and had a nursemaid come into the house. Kathleen took on the extra work taking care of the house and she became an assistant to the nursemaid learning bits and pieces of how to ease her mother's pain. One day when her mother woke, she called for Kathleen and sent the nursemaid out of the room. She was barely audible at first Kathleen thought her mother was telling more tales. She had told Kathleen that the tales she told her were not tales at all. That all the things she spoke were real. Kathleen wet a cloth and set in on her mother's forehead. Her mother told her of a small wooden box in the back of a shelf. When Kathleen took it out it was covered in dust. Her mother took a key off a chain around her neck and Kathleen opened the box. Inside she saw a folded piece of paper and a ring that she recognized from the stories her mother told of the Aes Sedia. She looked at it in amazement. Her mother told her that it had been her grandmother's. That for generations the women in her family had been going to the Tower. Some were tested and didn't make it in; they weren't strong enough. However, some had been raised. She told Kathleen that she had always dreamed of going to the White Tower to be tested herself, but she chosen a life with her husband and children instead. She said that the ring had been her mother's and that when she died she took it, not sure what to do with it she put it in the box. She wanted to return it to the Tower, but Kathleen's father wouldn't let her go. She said the paper was a map and asked her to return the ring to the tower where it belonged. Her mother fell silent and later that day she died. Kathleen realized that she was crying and quickly wiped her face with her hand. "Great," she thought, "here I am standing outside the most prestigous place in the world, blubbering like an infant! How will they take me seriously with my face all streaked with tears? I didn't walk away from my family and come all this way to get laughed at at the door. Pull yourself together and walk in there like you belong!" She took a small broken mirror out of the sack she had on her back and fixed her hair and did what she could to make the now rags of what had been her best dress look presentable. She took a deep breath and entered the door of the White Tower Category:Green Ajah Bios